Jersey. The square was crowded with people. All was a cheerful babel;
there was movement, colour everywhere. Here were the high and the
humble, hardi vlon and hardi biaou--the ugly and the beautiful, the
dwarfed and the tall, the dandy and the dowdy, the miser and the
spendthrift; young ladies gay in silks, laces, and scarfs from Spain, and
gentlemen with powdered wigs from Paris; sailors with red tunics from the
Mediterranean, and fishermen with blue and purple blouses from Brazil;
man-o'-war's-men with Greek petticoats, Turkish fezzes, and Portuguese
espadras. Jersey housewives, in bedgones and white caps, with molleton
dresses rolled up to the knees, pushed their way through the crowd, jars
of black butter, or jugs of cinnamon brandy on their heads. From La
Pyramide--the hospitable base of the statue of King George II--fishwives
called the merits of their conger-eels and ormers; and the clatter of a
thousand sabots made the Vier Marchi sound like a ship-builder's yard.

In this square Philip had loitered and played as a child. Down there,
leaning against a pillar of the Corn Market piazza was Elie Mattingley,
the grizzly-haired seller of foreign silks and droll odds and ends, who
had given him a silver flageolet when he was a little lad. There were
the same swaggering manners, the big gold rings in his ears; there was
the same red sash about the waist, the loose unbuttoned shirt, the
truculent knifebelt; there were the same keen brown eyes looking you
through and through, and the mouth with a middle tooth in both jaws gone.
Elie Mattingley, pirate, smuggler, and sometime master of a privateer,
had had dealings with people high and low in the island, and they had not
always, nor often, been conducted in the open Vier Marchi.

Fifteen years ago he used to have his little daughter Carterette always
beside him when he sold his wares. Philip wondered what had become of
her. He glanced round. . . . Ah, there she was, not far from her